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Stop yelling: Loving more and shouting less does a family good

Shouting at your children is spirit-breaking, parenting expert Julie Freedman Smith of Calgary’s Parenting Power believes. “Is yelling really getting you the desired outcome? Or, is it just a release of fear or frustration or disappointment?”

Photograph by: John Moore
, Getty Images

“Raise your words, not your voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.” — Rumi

It’s a parent’s dirty secret. Some do it every day, others engage in it a few times a day. Most do it in the privacy of their homes. Yet at the end of the day they feel guilty and ashamed at having yelled at their children, once again.

Ugly and ineffective, yelling tends to be a parent’s disciplinary crutch. While there is a place for it, like warning your child against immediate danger, when it happens all the time, you merely appear as a loud bobblehead.

Shouting at your children is not respectful or exemplary, it is spirit breaking, and it scares them, often into inaction.

“Is yelling really getting you the desired outcome? asks parenting expert Julie Freedman Smith of Calgary’s Parenting Power. “Or, is it just a release of fear or frustration or disappointment?”

If you want to get off the yelling crack, how long could you go without doing it? One week? One month? This may sound pathetic to a non-yeller (do these parents really exist?), but the reality is that like any habit, it is hard to break.

One mother of four boys, under the age of 6 1/2, set a goal to stop yelling for 365 days and went public with it over a year ago by creating The Orange Rhino challenge (www.theorangerhino.com).

“I used to struggle with wanting to talk about it, but not having the courage to tell anyone because I feared judgment,” writes The Orange Rhino, who keeps her identity private. “The day I started being honest with people about my yelling, a weight lifted” and the healing and self-work began.

She is now on her second 365-day challenge “to yell less and love more” and blogs about her stumbles and successes along the way. It turns out The Orange Rhino is not alone; some of her blog entries are reposted more than 13,000 times.

The Orange Rhino invites parents to join the challenge with their own time-appropriate goal and her site is an excellent resource to support them on their journey. She provides numerous alternatives to yelling, asks parents to identify their yelling triggers, bolsters a supportive online community, and creates a yelling meter for parents to keep their tempers in check.

For example, if parents hear themselves making the Level 5 Nasty Snap, that’s an alarm to dial it down before it escalates into the demeaning and hurtful Level 6 Yell, or Level 7 Raging Scream.

Calgary mother Katharine Rothstein is not doing the challenge, but she often references The Orange Rhino site for non-yelling tactics. While some of its strategies are intentionally silly, such as breaking into song, doing jumping jacks, or yelling into the closet or toilet, Rothstein has chosen a few that better jibe with her personality.

“When I start to feel angry, I give my kids a big hug or ask them for a high five,” says Rothstein, 37.

As many parents will attest, Rothstein wasn’t quick to anger before she had children. But she began feeling overwhelmed after her second child was born and it was then that she started yelling. The behaviour that gets her really riled up, she says, is when her four-year-old son is aggressive with his one-and-a-half-year-old sister. In these instances, she repeats the mantra: “They are kids, they are still learning.”

And what about the dichotomy of our parenting personas? — the calm, cool, and collected parent in public versus the closeted screamer.

“We save our worst behaviour for home, that’s where we pick our nose, that’s where we fart out loud,” says Freedman Smith. Acting differently in public than in private is normal, she says, but it doesn’t necessarily make it right.

“If yelling at your kids is not something you feel good about, if it’s not a proud move and if it doesn’t support your values, then whether it happens at home or in public it’s time to re-evaluate and make a change.”

While The Orange Rhino offers many alternatives to yelling, what Freedman Smith found lacking from the website were strategies to better communication with your children.

She suggests first identifying the situations that cause parents to yell, perhaps it’s mealtime or bedtime. Then, make a plan ahead of time that requires your children to do the behaviour when you ask. Be intentional, she says, rather than react in the moment.

And, of course, whether you’re three years old and intentionally throwing food on the floor or 35 years old and yelling about it, altering your behaviour does not happen overnight. It takes practise.

The Orange Rhino’s appeal also comes from her heartfelt narratives. Her entry entitled, “Incredible moments can happen when you don’t yell” is about a night when her son got out of bed well after bedtime. As she remained calm and tucked him back into bed, he shared some tender sentiments with her.

She points out that pre-challenge, she would have barged into his room yelling at him to get back to bed and this beautiful moment between parent and child would not have happened.

Shouting at your children is spirit-breaking, parenting expert Julie Freedman Smith of Calgary’s Parenting Power believes. “Is yelling really getting you the desired outcome? Or, is it just a release of fear or frustration or disappointment?”

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